The lack of sleep finally hit me in the afternoon, but I managed to recover enough to make it out to the Ottawa Knitting Guild meeting in the evening to hear Cat speak again. Cat talked about a few things, but her strongest message was to support local yarn stores.

The advice that stuck in my head was not to use pattern stores as showrooms for books. Don’t go in there, look at a book, decide you like it, then buy it online to save a few bucks. Support your local store. Then it can stay open so that you can get advice, touch yarn before you buy it, and see how various colours work together. It makes a lot of sense. I depended heavily on my LYS for advice when I was branching out into lace quite a few years ago, and I’ve been a rather good customer ever since.

Since I don’t have any more knitting or yarn pictures for you at the moment, here is some cuteness from my daughter. She spontaneously wrote this one day when she came home from school last week. I guess they’d been bombarded with Mother’s Day messaging at school:

Translated:

Hi mom! Thanks for cleaning the house. Thanks for buying my clothes. Thanks for cleaning the bathroom. I love you!

I guess the house cleaning we did together the previous weekend had quite an effect on her!

Today’s class changed that. Here’s my first Sweet Tomato sock heel knit in Gen’s Striped Sock Yarn in her Poison Apple colourway. Please ignore the chipped purple nail polish.

Once I saw the socks that my friend Kirsti knit in this colourway I had to knit it myself. I have made good progress on this sock today, and I think it’s quite possible for me to actually finish a pair of socks in a reasonable amount of time. That doesn’t mean it’ll happen.

Here’s yesterday’s cowl on Mary Pat. It looked so good on her once she tried it on that I decided that it had to be hers. I loved the process of spinning & the way the colours looked, but they never were *my* colours. I guess I was making it for her all along!

I confess to being the guilty party who started the inappropriate laughter mid-afternoon when Cat said something like, “First you need to be sure that you are in the mobius position.” I can be such a child. I did keep knitting once I’d wiped away my tears of laughter. Good thing my friend Louise wasn’t there to keep me in stitches!

I finished my cowl tonight & spent a while using Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off to cast off 400 stitches. I think I’ve fixed that technique in my head too, and I don’t know why I didn’t have it there before. I was knitting today with the lovely Sweet Georgia merino handspun that I made a while back. The pictures don’t really do this thing justice.

It’s 2×2 ribbing in the middle, with some twists, some 1×1 ribbing, and then and expansion back into 2×2 ribbing for a bit of a floppier ending. It looks even better when worn, but I couldn’t manage those types of pictures tonight.

My fingers are still working, which is good. I’m not quite ready for tomorrow’s Sweet Tomato Heel class. I’ve got my sock cast on, but I’d like to get another few inches knit before I start attempting a heel. I’m hoping there will be time in the morning before class starts!

Each of these bobbins holds 2 batts from my Lichen cupcake batts. I’m not sure why one of them looks so much more full than the other, except that perhaps I did a crappy job of the winding.

I’ve got 2 more batts to spin, and I’m working on the fifth one right now. Hopefully by next week I’ll have some real yarn to show for all this work!

Today’s topic was New Pathways for Sock Knitters and I knit a couple of wee Coriolis socks. Once I was done one I felt compelled to make the other one. They could look better, but Teddy was the only useful model I could come up with on short notice.

Here’s a picture of Cat beaming as she signed books for folks after class.

I had a great day absorbing her ideas, energy, and fun teaching stories. I have now practiced Judy Becker‘s magic cast on enough that it may be finally stuck in my head. I’m looking forward to a few more days of this!

I don’t know why I bought these colours, but I was getting jealous when other people were picking them up and looking at them, so I fixed that.

Also, my Romney from the Stoddart Family Farm came home in this:

It’s got a zip & everything!

Here are a few more shots from the Frolic. I didn’t take enough pictures and then many of them kind of looked like crap. Next time!

First I’ll show you that I did start spinning a box from The Cupcake Fiber Company. This is Falkland in lichen. The green with streaks of yellow is perfect for me. I’m only about 1/3 into the first batt, but it’s spinning up beautiful and skinny. This could take a while. Plus it’s a busy week coming up.

Here are some of my purchases from last weekend:

Natural Romney from the Stoddart Family Farm. Silvia apologized because the scale wasn’t functioning & so I wound up paying for 100g when I got closer to 150g.

A box of Wellington Screamin’ Green from Wellington Fibres:

A batt from The Purple Purl (stopped in briefly on Sunday before the trip home):

So yes, I’m on a green kick again. In fact the only reason I didn’t get green from Silvia was that it was Corriedale & I wanted to get some of their own Romney instead.

It has not escaped my notice that there seems to be more wool & fluff coming into my house than leaving it. I’ve started contemplating selling some handspun. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I love it all, but if I’m producing close to a skein a week there just isn’t time to knit it all.

(note Sheep Heid hanging up there and Rams & Yowes in progress on the chair)

And here it is at the end of the day when we were all finished:

The best part of the weekend? This:

(Debbie with Franklin and Franklin with me – please note we’d just been setting up the booth after a day long drive & I wasn’t exactly well-dressed)

Franklin Habit was the keynote instructor for the Frolic. After setting up the booth on Friday night, Debbie and I were taking a quick sneak peek around the booths and we met Franklin & had a great little chat. I took him by surprise with a hug after he said something nice to me (sorry Franklin!). He still signed my copy of “It Itches” for me the next morning when I ran into him on Saturday morning.

I’ll show you the things that I brought back a little later and some other sights of the Frolic when I’ve finished unpacking & doing the laundry.

I split it in half and weighed it, intending on spinning a 2 ply. The singles were nice and round and squishy (yes, I only use the best technical spinning terms):

I tried a few yards of 2 ply and didn’t like the look of it, so I’ve got 2 almost even skeins (~58 grams each) of a chain-plied yarn for a total of about 315 yards. I did enjoy the Targhee a great deal. It was quite easy to spin and the end result feels great and very knittable.

I’m thinking that I’d like to do another fine fine lace weight yarn next, so I have a feeling I’ll be breaking into another box of Cupcakes in the near future.

Say, did I mention yet that Joan (of the Cupcake Fiber Company) is now also Joan of Meat Sheep Industries? She’s doing 8 to 48 ounce lots of various fibers at a very reasonable $3/oz. Sweater spinning, anyone? I haven’t succumbed yet, but that’s just a factor of the size of my current spinning stash.

A couple of weeks ago I handed it over to my friend Yvonne of Yvieknits Yarns and I got it back tonight. It’s a lovely green that I’m motivated to knit.

Now I’m looking forward to playing with this yarn! Thanks so much, Yvonne.